None of them, as far as he could see, had any incentive to engineer the mixup which had nearly caused him to miss the ship. Of course he might be reading into it more than was there. It could have happened that way accidentally. And then maybe it didn't.
His thoughts were interrupted by a knock. "Who's there?" he called.
Larienne walked in. "Nobody asks who," she said. "It's always come in. Even I know that, and I've been on this traveling isolation ward a mere three years."
She dropped into a chair and draped her legs, long legs that were worth showing off. She had a certain air of impartiality that attracted attention. She was smart, though, and knew when to discard impartiality.
She eyed him curiously. "I'm trying to discover the secret of your popularity. That damn plant is pining for you."
"It's not me," he said. "You have to know how to handle it."
"Thanks," she said dryly. "I don't know how. But Richel Alsint, boy plant psychologist, does. He knows when to increase the circulation, when to give it an extra shot of minerals, and when, on the other hand, to scare the damn thing out of its wits, which I sometimes believe it actually has."
"Don't personalize it," he warned. "It's partly plant and partly a machine. Your mistake is that you treat it as if it were wholly a machine."
"Seems to me I've heard that before. What should I do that I don't?"
"Cycles," he said. "Rhythm. A machine doesn't need that kind of treatment, but a plant does. Normally it starts as a seed, grows to maturity, produces more seeds, and eventually dies. Our plant isn't like that, of course. It never produces seeds, and, if we're careful, doesn't die. Yet it does have something that faintly corresponds to the original cycles."